Theodicy

An article in The Wall Street Journal notes that “Some American soldiers returned from Afghanistan bearing scars or missing limbs. Others have wounds invisible to those around them, or even to themselves.”

The article highlights the story of Tyler Koller. Raised in a conservative Christian home, Koller joined the Army at the age of 18, and his first deployment was with Bravo Company. In his Army days, the fire in Koller’s belly was stoked by belief in his mission and faith in a just and loving God. He’d gather his squad to say a prayer before they stepped out of the wire to go on patrol, and he wouldn’t ever say a cuss word, even though his fellow troops used to offer him money to say the F-word out loud. “No way,” he’d say. It would be an affront to the Lord and to his mother, who raised him in the Pentecostal church.

Koller wasn’t physically broken in Afghanistan, but something did happen to him. Like many men and women who went to Iraq and Afghanistan in over 20 years of war, he suffered a moral injury. A soldier heads to a war zone with a carefully tuned moral compass that parents and preachers and teachers and friends have helped to calibrate.

But in a combat zone, soldiers see, hear, and do things that aren’t aligned with the true north of that moral compass. Koller saw horrible things in Afghanistan: the killing of American and Taliban soldiers but also the inadvertent maiming of children. He learned of bacha bazi, a slang term for the sexual abuse of young boys by corrupt Afghan policemen.

“The faith that I had went away,” Koller said, though “I have hope in my heart that there’s a higher being out there.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

This is a negative illustration, but it can raise questions around suffering or the problem of evil. What does your sermon text or biblical theme say about how to maintain your faith in the midst of suffering and evil?

How do you make sense of the problem of pain and the wonder of beauty occurring in the same world? If you’ve ever had the privilege of visiting the Louvre in Paris, you probably braved the crowds to get a glimpse of the statue of Venus de Milo.

Millions have been captivated by the woman’s physical beauty displayed in stunningly smooth marble. They’ve also been disturbed by seeing her arms broken off. Somehow the damage done to her arms doesn’t destroy the aesthetic pleasure of viewing the sculpture as a whole. But it does cause a conflicted experience—such beauty, marred by such violence.

I doubt if anyone has ever stood in front of that masterpiece and asked, “Why did the sculptor break off the arms?” More likely, everyone concludes the beautiful parts are the work of a master artist and the broken parts are the results of someone or something else—either a destructive criminal or a natural catastrophe.

We need a unified perspective on created beauty and marred ugliness that can make sense of both. The Christian faith provides that. It points to a good God who made a beautiful world with pleasures for people to enjoy. But it also recognizes damage caused by sinful people. Ultimately, it points to a process of restoration that has already begun and will continue forever.

Texas pastor Tan Flippin was left thanking God, after a cycling accident in 2018 landed him in the hospital with fractures to his hip. His ride that eventful day, past a stretch undergoing repair, beside a subdivision, led to the crash that threw him off his bicycle. He said later, “I’d gone through that area before with no issues.”

When the doctors at the hospital ordered a CT scan to check for a concussion, what they discovered was shocking. They noticed a large malignant tumor on the front of Tan’s brain. That discovery began a long journey of treatment that eventually led to bone marrow and stem cell transplants. Today, he is cancer-free.

Flippin said, “God allowed the accident for my brain tumor to be found.”

The story has led to Flippin's testimony being shared on a regular basis. He said, "People want me to tell this story and that my faith has inspired them and been an encouragement. I hear that about every week.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Similarly, God can use the challenges and unpleasant situations we encounter to work out something good in our lives and to bring glory to his name. We can trust God to work out something meaningful through them (Phil. 1:12-18).

Pop R&B duo Hall & Oates, hitmakers in the late 70s and early 80s, made their unlikely team-up thanks to a series of unfortunate setbacks, one of which involved an incident of gun violence.

Daryl Hall and John Oates both grew up in suburban Philadelphia and attended Temple University. Hall studied music while Oates majored in journalism, but both remained involved in musical groups during their teenage years. Hall was with a group called the Temptones; Oates was part of The Masters.

In 1967, both groups were invited to play a dance at the Adelphi Ballroom. It was sponsored by radio disc jockey Jerry Bishop, who promised airtime to the groups who played. Oates later said in an interview, “When Jerry Bishop contacted you, you had to go. If you didn’t, your record wouldn’t get played on the radio.”

Daryl and John were at the Adelphi at the same time, but didn’t meet each other until a fracas broke out before the show started. “We were all getting ready for the show to start when we heard screams—and then gunshots,” Oates said in 2016. “It seemed a full-scale riot had erupted out in the theater, not a shocker given the times. Philly was a city where racial tensions had begun to boil over.”

The show was canceled, but because the show was happening on an upper floor, the only way out for the musicians was to take a small service elevator. Daryl and John ended up standing next to each other, striking up a nervous conversation. Hall remembers saying, “Oh, well, you didn’t get to go on, either. How ya doin’?”

By the time they met each other again on campus to reminisce on their brush with tragedy, Oates’ group had been disbanded, so he joined the Temptones as a guitarist. Then later, after the Temptones disbanded, they continued their musical friendship as roommates.

But their partnership didn’t truly solidify until Oates returned from a trip to Europe and found himself in dire need of shelter. With nowhere else to go, John showed up to crash at Daryl’s house. And the rest is history. Oates said, “That was our true birth as a duo.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Even when we don't get what we want, God knows how to use any circumstance to bring us one step closer to our destiny in his will.

Dieunerst Collin is one of the latest collegiate athletes to sign an NIL deal. The 2021 NCAA policy that allows athletes to receive compensation in exchange for sponsors who use their name, image, and/or likeness. Collin, a freshman offensive lineman for the Lake Erie College Storm football team, is now being sponsored by Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen.

It wasn’t only Collin’s stellar play that put him on Popeye’s radar for a sponsorship. Collin has been associated with the brand for a long time because, as a young boy, he was captured on a short video inside of a Popeyes restaurant that ended up as a source of bullying and ridicule.

While he was waiting for his father and brother to return from the restroom, a teenager began filming Collin, claiming he looked like a kid version of a local rapper. The video was uploaded to Vine (a defunct video sharing service), where it went viral. It was eventually turned into various GIFs and memes that people used for comedic purposes. Collin became known as the “Popeyes Meme Kid.”

Collin told CNN,

When it happened, we didn’t want to be in the spotlight. People were coming to my dad and saying, “Hey, we’ve seen your kid on this,” trying to make a joke of it. My dad didn’t like it for his kids to be joked on. But now, the fact that I switched it into a blessing, he likes it.

As a teenager Collin helped win a state championship for East Orange Campus High School in New Jersey, and was given first-team all-conference honors. At the conclusion of his freshman season at Lake Erie, Collin tweeted in affirmation from someone who suggested that Popeyes should sign the young man to an endorsement deal. A few days later, the deal was official.

Collin is now featured on a new video, on the official Popeyes Instagram account, touting his accomplishments as Collin says words of affirmation to his younger self:

This is where the story started, the moment that made us a meme. We didn’t ask for it, but don’t worry, little man, we didn’t let it stop us. We learned to lean in, we turned the attention into motivation, and the motivation into championships. From memes to dreams.

Possible Preaching Angle:

In his grace, God can use episodes of bullying or ridicule and redeem them to show your worth and his goodness.

Novelist Mitali Perkins was raised in a Hindu home, where her father taught his children that God was a divine spirit of love. But when her friend, Clayton, was killed in a car accident involving a drunk driver, Mitali’s eyes were opened to a world of suffering. What kind of God would allow this? She grieved for her friend and put aside God for the rest of high school.

College engaged her in different philosophies and world religions. The first assignment in her humanities course was to read the Book of Genesis. She read it eagerly but was left scratching her head. “Did my Christian friends really believe this stuff?”

During her junior year she studied in Vienna and began reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. A dorm buddy also gave her a copy of the New Testament. Mitali joined a few students in travelling to Russia during midwinter break. As they toured prisons, cemeteries, and churches with their history of massacres and torture she felt overwhelmed by evil. “How could God—if God existed—leave humanity alone to endure so much?”

She writes:

One afternoon, they headed to the world-renowned museum the Hermitage. Again, many of the paintings depicted Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. As our group was about to leave, the museum official pulled me aside. “What are you thinking about so deeply?” he asked in a low voice. I was surprised into telling the truth. “A loving God. Human suffering. How can both exist?” He said, “You are at an intersection of choice. Either you decide that Jesus is the Son of God, or you turn your back on him forever. You must choose.”

When we returned to Vienna, I decided to go to the original source of his story: the New Testament. Soon, I was encountering a Jew with olive-colored skin, black hair, and dark eyes. This Middle Eastern man healed foreign women; he knew what it was to feel lonely and rejected. Oddly, his life and words seemed familiar. I started to realize that most of my beloved stories had illuminated the life of this man. Or was he a man? In the Gospels, he was enraging religious and political leaders by claiming a divine identity. They killed him. He let them. I was stunned.

If he was telling the truth, then this was God submitting to the four enemies of humanity—pain, grief, evil, and death—in order to destroy them all. The Cross was where a loving God and the suffering of humanity could finally be reconciled.

One snowy evening in Vienna, I made my decision. I would follow Jesus as God. I would quietly try to do what he did and said. I wrote to my friend to thank him for the New Testament and shared my decision to follow Jesus.

Bit by bit, I also fell in love with the church, and ended up married to a Presbyterian pastor. In the American church, I still sometimes feel like an outsider. But I know from the Bible that the global church belongs to one person: Jesus of Nazareth, the author of faith, the defender of the outcast, the healer of the brokenhearted. All blood is the same color: Red, like his, spilling lavishly from the Cross at the perfect intersection of human suffering and divine love.

Job, Epicurus, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, and other famous thinkers wrestled with explaining why an all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful God would allow suffering.

Amid the pandemic and its 6.4 million reported deaths (as of August, 2022), the Pew Research Center surveyed 6,485 American adults—including 1,421 evangelicals—in September 2021. They were asked about how they philosophically “make sense of suffering and bad things happening to people.”

Among the survey’s main findings:

7 in 10 American adults agree that suffering is “mostly a consequence of people’s own actions.”

7 in 10 agree that suffering is “mostly a result of the way society is structured.”

8 in 10 believe—either in “God as described in the Bible” (58%) or in “a higher power or spiritual force” (32%)—yet say most suffering “comes from the actions of people, not from God.”

7 in 10 believe human beings are “free to act in ways that go against the plans of God or a higher power.”

5 in 10 believe God allows suffering because it is “part of a larger plan.”

4 in 10 believe Satan is responsible for most of the world’s suffering.

Less than 2 in 10 say they have doubted God’s omnipotence, goodness, or existence because of suffering.

The popular Pursuit of Wonder's video considers whether everything happens for a reason. In a fictional piece, a young man contends he has led a good and decent life, but in an instant an earthquake collapses his home and he is hospitalized with serious injuries. He is at a loss as to why.

"I wonder, as I lie here dying in this seemingly reasonless way, what this means. If, I’ve never done anything deserving of such a tragedy, how then could there be any good reason for this event occurring onto me?" He admits his prior beliefs were wrong:

That every time I said, “Everything happens for a reason.” Every time I heard it and believed it. Every time I seemingly found a reason for why something happened to me … I meant that it happened for a good reason. A just reason. I meant that there was some considerate order to the universe, and everything in my story was placed there to allow me to become the winner of it. But how foolish was I to think this? That I was somehow special. Somehow important. And that somehow the universe agreed and gave me immunity from the fact that no one wins this thing.

In spite of life's chaos and tragedies, the narrator still chooses to believe everything in his life happens for a reason. However, one day the reasons will dry up. "And when this moment comes, there will be no ink left to write a reason for running out of ink. And so, until then, I say I will lie here writing in this hospital bed, revolting against the hopelessness, creating every last reason I can."

You can watch the video here (3 mi. 13 sec. - 6 min. 16 sec.).

Possible Preaching Angle:

The universe can be a frustratingly random place where “accidents happen.” Like Job, people struggle to find meaning in evil events. However, only the Christian has a Father in heaven who “causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. (Rom. 8:28)”

Annahita Parsan shares how she survived snowy mountains, a filthy prison, and an abusive husband as God brought her to faith in Christ.

I was born in beautiful, peaceful Iran. My life was good, and it got even better when I fell in love, got married, and gave birth to my son, Daniel. Even the fact that my country was being overtaken by Islamic revolutionaries couldn’t dampen my joy. Like so many people whose lives feel perfect, I had little appetite for God. But all that was about to change.

Death came like a thief one morning soon after Daniel was born. My husband was killed in a traffic accident, and in an instant my life was robbed of joy. I was in shock. I was in denial. And for the first time in my life, my mind turned to God. I asked, What have I done to deserve this?

In time the pain dulled a little, and I remarried. But from the first night we were together, my new husband revealed himself to be a violent, abusive man. My life was once more plunged into pain and sorrow. Only this time, there was no end in sight.

I gave birth to a daughter, Roksana, but my husband’s beatings continued. And when he got in trouble with the authorities, I had no choice but to join him as he fled across the mountains into Turkey. It was a terrible journey. We weren’t equipped for the snow, and soon my fingers, mouth, and toes were black with frostbite. And when I realized that Roksana was no longer breathing, my thoughts once more returned to God. Why are you punishing me this way?

Crouched on the cold ground, my baby’s tiny body hanging limply in my arms, I was at my lowest point. I had nothing left with which to fight. I wanted to die. I had no idea that God was right there with me.

Hours later, as we sat by a fire in the custody of Turkish police, I got my first real glimpse of God. Roksana was alive. It was a miracle. Throughout the next four months that we spent locked up in a filthy Turkish prison, God was right there. He kept me safe from many dangers, and I know he was there too in the kindness of a stranger: a businessman, once imprisoned alongside us, who helped secure our release through Amnesty International.

But it wasn’t until I was far away from Turkey that God started to reveal himself more clearly. One day two men knocked on my apartment door. They wanted to talk about Jesus, but I was too scared of my husband to talk to strangers. They returned the next day and handed me a Bible. I knew I should have thrown it away, but something made me want to keep it. So I hid it where my husband couldn’t find it. The next time he beat me until my body was bruised and sore, something compelled me to give the Bible a look. It spoke to me, and I started to speak to God. If you really are there, God, please help.

Eventually, with the help of the police, I was able to leave my husband. My children and I were relocated to another city and offered emergency shelter by nuns. As I listened to them talk and sing about loving and following Jesus, something awakened within me. Could I ever learn to love and trust you too, Jesus?

Years passed before I had an answer. I was back in Iran, having returned to visit a dying relative. The authorities were suspicious as to why I had left Iran in the first place, and I knew I couldn’t tell the truth about my escape without facing a return to prison. After three months of court hearings and interviews, I stood before a judge, waiting to hear his verdict. Powerless and desperate, I turned fully to the One who had been beside me throughout it all. I promised God I would give my life to Christ if he could deliver me from this ordeal.

Right then, as I prayed, he freed me from the enemy’s grip. The judge, who saw that I was crying, had mercy on me and let me go free. The very next day, I was back in Sweden—God had rescued me and brought me safely home. From that day on, my life has been his.

Today, at my church in Sweden, I have the privilege of seeing God powerfully at work in the lives of so many Muslims. All over the world, God is appearing in dreams and visions to men and women who have previously followed Allah.

Andrew Brunson, a Christian pastor from North Carolina spent 20 years in Turkey. He had a quiet but deep ministry there until 2016, when after a failed military coup, the government arrested him along with journalists, activists, military officers, and others. The Turkish government labeled Brunson a spy.

Brunson was held for more than a year without charges. He spent nearly two years in prison, often enduring long trial sessions. At one point, it looked like he could spend years or even decades in Turkish prisons. Finally, after pressure from the Trump administration, Brunson was released from prison and returned to the United States.

In a Wheaton College chapel talk, Brunson candidly said that he did not feel God’s overwhelming presence during his stay in prison. Instead, he experienced something even deeper. Brunson said, “[After a few days in prison], I completely lost the sense of God’s presence. God was silent. And he remained silent for two years.”

When he was finally brought to trial, things were even worse. He says:

There are some who go into the valley of testing and some do not make it out … I was broken. I lay there alone in my solitary cell, I had great fear, terrible grief, and I was weeping. And the thought kept going through my mind, Where are you God? Why are you so far away? And I opened my mouth as I wept aloud, and I was surprised at what I heard coming out of my mouth. I heard, “I love you Jesus. I love you Jesus. I love you Jesus.” I thought here is my victory. Even if you’re silent, I love you. Even if you let my enemy harm me, I love you. [As] Jesus said, “But the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.”

You can watch it here

Bench player Skal Labissiere arrived in Portland, knowing that his playing time would be minimal at best. Yet, reflecting on his path to the NBA, he was not filled with anxiety, but gratitude.

Labissiere knows that he’ll probably just play a few “garbage time” minutes during a blowout, a far cry from the 20 minutes per game he played for his last team. But here’s his perspective: “Things like this? Playing time? Yeah, it’s frustrating at times, but … after what I’ve been through, believe me, I’m good. God got me to this point, and I still have a ways to go. I’m excited about what’s ahead here.”

Labissiere was alluding to the tragic earthquake in his native Haiti that he experienced as a 13-year-old. The quake caught him unaware on the third floor of his home. He eventually had a wall crash onto his back as he protected his mother from the shifting rubble. It left him unable to walk for weeks.

His family all survived, but they knew his dream of playing NBA basketball would be difficult if he remained in Port-Au-Prince, so his father found a nonprofit that might help a young man with Labissiere’s potential. Eight months later, he flew to the US to live with local resident Gerald Hamilton and his family in Memphis, Tennessee. The love and support from the Hamiltons gave him the foundation he needed to pursue high school basketball, then college hoops at Kentucky, and eventually the NBA.

Labissiere said the earthquake was an awful event, but he added, “But for me, God used that experience to open doors.”

Potential Preaching Angles: Because of God’s great love and omnipotence, God can create opportunity out of tragedy. Even situations that look and feel hopeless are still within God’s grasp of blessing.

When people are incarcerated, they often yearn for ways to help repay their debt to society. For five men, the opportunity came sooner than they expected. While working on the side of the road repairing concrete medians, their group was approached by Shadow Lantry, a motorist whose one-year-old daughter had been accidentally locked inside the car. The girl’s father had strapped her into the rear car seat, threw the keys in the front seat and closed the doors, not realizing they were locked.

Providentially, these men had experience getting into locked vehicles without the key. As the deputies oversaw and Lantry stood by recording video, they used a clothes hangar to jimmy the lock of her Chevy Tahoe. The child was freed in less than five minutes.

“Thank God for the criminals in the world,” Landy was recorded saying. “I respect all y’all.”

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco agreed. "There's only a very small percentage of those criminals out there that want to fight us and want to attack us, but a lot of them, like these individuals, they know they made bad mistakes, bad choices, but they want to do the right thing in life."

Potential Preaching Angle:

God can use even our sinful past for redemptive purposes, so what people intend for evil God can use for good.

John Oliver, the host of the satirical news show, HBO's Last Week Tonight, was interviewed by Terri Gross on Fresh Air. Gross asked, "Did you go to church a lot when you were growing up?" Oliver responded:

I did until I was, like, 11 or 12, and I just didn't believe in it. There were too many … there were some bad things happening then and I just didn't care. I just didn't feel like there were any answers I liked coming from the church I went to … There were kids at school who died and my uncle dying was really devastating to me, and I just didn't feel like … when you ask like a hard question and you were kind of brushed off with, "Well, you know, it's God's will." That kind of knocked me out. If that's true then I want nothing to do with this. But you just can't say that it's God's will for these kids at school dying for no reason. That's just not a good enough answer. You've got to wrestle with it a bit more than that.

In an interview for Rolling Stone magazine, U2's lead singer Bono talks about how he's learning to connect with David's honest laments and prayers from the Book of Psalms. Bono suffered several facial, arm, and shoulder fractures that required three metal plates and 18 screws after a bike accident in Central Park. He's also had serious back and vocal cord problems. He is now writing songs with deeper meaning: "I read the Psalms of David all the time. They are amazing. He is the first bluesman, shouting at God, 'Why did this happen to me?' But there's honesty in that too."

Bono recounts David's struggles with King Saul, especially during David's hideout in the cave trying to avoid Saul's attempts to murder him. "In a moment of demonic rage, Saul turns against [David], tries to kill him with a spear, and David is, in fact, exiled. He is chased, and he hides out in a cave. And in the darkness of that cave, in the silence and the fear and probably the stink, he writes the psalm."

Bono concludes, "And I wish that weren't true. I wish I didn't know enough about art to know that that is true—that sometimes you just have to be in that cave of despair."

Editor's Note: Author Andy Crouch originally used this story to illustrate that we don't need to be enslaved to technology. You could delete the references to technology and use this story to illustrate praise or worship or gratitude.

On January 12, 2010, a massive and devastating earth quake struck just outside Port-au-Prince, the capital city of Haiti. Countless buildings in the city collapsed and over a hundred thousand lives were lost. The already shaky power grid was effectively destroyed, along with every other form of infrastructure. That night, with aftershocks rolling through the ground, almost all the residents of the city and the surrounding countryside stayed outside, torn with grief and fear. The residents of the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere had little access to the easy-everywhere life of technology even before the earthquake, and now, with their world in ruins, they had none.

An article on NPR summarized it this way: "For the Western hemisphere's poorest country, the earthquake that hit Haiti in January [2010] was an especially cruel blow. Despite this, it's hard to find a Haitian who doesn't profess a belief in a loving God."

And they sang. When you don't have technology, you still have song. When you've lost everything, in fact, you still have song. All over the hills of Haiti those first terrible nights, under the starlit sky, the voices of the people of Haiti rose up in grief and lament, in prayer and hope.

They had something we have almost lost—and they still have it, as anyone who has visited a Haitian church or family knows. We can have it in our homes, and in our churches too, if we choose not to let technology do the singing for us.

Dr. Jamie Aten, a cancer survivor and a Christian who researches how people respond to trauma, wrote in The Washington Post in which he urged trauma survivors to "make meaning of your experience." Here's what Aten wrote:

Most of us operate from what some researchers refer to as a "just" worldview. We tend to believe that if we are good, good things will happen. It's difficult, then, to make meaning when bad things happen to us.

I went to the doctor for tests because of shooting pains in my leg. I never dreamed it was from a mass sitting on a nerve bundle in my pelvis. It was difficult for me to wrap my head around what had happened. Thoughts like, "Wasn't I a good person?" plagued me. A colleague of mine deployed to help with a relief agency after Superstorm Sandy, and she met a man whose roof had been blown away by gale-strength winds. This man surprised the relief team with an optimistic quip: "Sometimes you have to lose the roof," he said, "to see the stars." There is a man who knows how to find meaning in loss.

My colleagues and I have interviewed and surveyed disaster survivors about their views of God in the wake of catastrophe. We have found that you can have two people who go through almost identical losses, with one believing God saved them, while the other believes God is punishing them.

Remember, they went through the same disaster. But in a forthcoming volume of Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, we found that the person who doesn't find positive meaning is likely to struggle a great deal more. I encourage you: Even in the worst moments, look for the stars.

Stephen Fry, English actor and comedian, is a committed atheist. In response to the question of what he would say to God upon death, he stated, "I'd say, 'Bone cancer in children? What's that about? … How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil.' Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain? That's what I would say."

In response to the interviewer's second question, "And you think you are going to get in, like that?" only served to fuel his fervor. "But I wouldn't want to," Fry insisted. "I wouldn't want to get in on his terms. They are wrong." He continues, "Now, if I died and it was Pluto, Hades, and if it was the 12 Greek gods then I would have more truck with it, because the Greeks didn't pretend to not be human in their appetites, in their capriciousness, and in their unreasonableness … they didn't present themselves as being all-seeing, all-wise, all-kind, all-beneficent, because the god that created this universe, if it was created by god, is quite clearly a maniac … utter maniac, totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of god would do that?"

Editors Notes: See this thoughtful response to Fry's comments from Krish Kandiah.

Joe Cumming, a fellow of the Faith and Culture Center at Yale, has a special interest in respectful Christian witness to Muslims, among whom he lived for many years. Joe once had the opportunity to meet with the Lebanese Ayatollah, one of the most influential Muslim clerics in the Arab world. It was the day before the holiest day of the year for Shiite Muslims, so it was like asking for an audience with the Pope on Christmas Eve.

The sheik's secretary said Joe could only have five minutes—and at four minutes and fifty-five seconds, he should be standing to leave. As Joe prayed hard about what he could say, he saw a banner across the road that read in Arabic, "The victory of blood over the sword." This meant that when the enemies of Muhammad's grandson Hussein came to kill him, he could have called on God to kill them. Instead, he laid down his sword and was massacred, becoming a sign of forgiving the sins of others. So, when the Ayatollah asked Joe what he had to say, Joe said, "Doesn't that banner mean that Hussein won a greater victory by laying down his life?"

"Yes," said the sheikh, "that's what it means."

"That's what I believe about Jesus," said Joe Cumming. "He could have killed his enemies, but instead he laid down his life for them in love, and prayed for their forgiveness. I believe that is the key to break the cycle of violence and revenge in the world."

The Ayatollah turned to his followers and said, "I totally agree with every word this Christian man of God has just said."

Joe stood to leave. His five minutes were up. "Where are you going?" said the sheikh. "There's more I want to talk about."

He kept Joe for two hours.

At one point the Ayatollah brought up the death of two little boys on the West Bank, killed by a misfired missile as they played soccer. "What do you have to say about this as a Christian?" he asked.

Joe replied, "I look at the suffering of all innocent victims through the lens of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. I might wonder at times if God has abandoned the human race. But in the suffering of Jesus Christ, I see the sign of God's solidarity with all innocent victims of violence and suffering."

The sheikh turned again to his followers and said, "I agree with every word this Christian man of God has just said." What a powerful thing to be able to say, in light of the cross, "If Christ be for us, who can be against us?"

Editor's note: Though you might not be persuaded by the information below, it still has great illustrative potential. D'Souza's article might provide an intriguing way into a sermon that deals with why God allows bad things to happen. It might be something you want to contend with or elevate as a possibility. It might be a way to raise several other questions about why bad things happen. Or, taking a cue from the article itself, you might want to use the following illustration to interact with some of the thoughts offered by author and apologist C. S. Lewis, who believed that God possibly uses natural disasters to draw people to himself, draw people together, or even provide moral instruction to the survivors.

The problem of theodicy—why bad things happen to good people—predates Christianity. Writing around 300 BC, the Greek philosopher Epicurus framed the problem this way: God is believed by most people to be infinite in his power and also in his goodness and compassion. Now evil exists in the world and seems always to have existed. If God is unable to remove evil, he lacks omnipotence. If God is able to remove evil but doesn't, he lacks goodness and compassion. So clearly the all-powerful, compassionate God that most people pray to does not exist.

This old critique has been revived by [theologian] Bart Ehrman in God's Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer. Theologians over the centuries have responded to questions about the existence of evil by pointing out that man, not God, is the author of moral evil. Evil in this view refers to the bad things that people do to each other. Moral evil is the necessary price that God pays for granting humans moral autonomy.

Yet while human freedom may account for moral evil, it cannot account for natural evil, or more accurately, natural suffering. Ehrman's book is full of examples, to which we can add recent tragedies such as the earthquake in China last spring and the 2004 tsunami that killed tens of thousands in Southeast Asia.

Christian apologists such as C. S. Lewis have attempted to account for natural disasters by showing how they draw people together, or how they provide moral instruction to the survivors, or how they turn our eyes to God. Ehrman asks, but couldn't God have found better ways to achieve these worthy objectives? Rejecting as implausible and offensive the usual responses to innocent suffering, Ehrman has stopped calling himself a Christian.

A fresh way of looking at the problem of natural evil and suffering comes from Rare Earth, a 2003 book by Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee that traces the myriad conditions required for life to exist on any planet. In a sense, the authors—an eminent paleontologist and an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle—are discussing the "anthropic principle," which specifies the degree to which our planet appears fine-tuned for complex life. The concept is often used in Christian apologetics to show that our intelligently designed universe seems to point to an intelligent designer.

Ward and Brownlee ask: Why do natural disasters such as earthquakes, seaquakes, and tsunamis occur? All three are the consequence of plate tectonics, the giant plates that move under the surface of the earth and the ocean floor. Apparently our planet is unique in having plate tectonics. Ward and Brownlee show that without this geological feature, there would be no large mountain ranges or continents.

While natural disasters occasionally wreak havoc, our planet needs plate tectonics to produce the biodiversity that enables complex life to flourish on earth. Without plate tectonics, earth's land would be submerged to a depth of several thousand feet. Fish might survive in such an environment, but not humans.

Plate tectonics also help regulate the earth's climate, preventing the onset of scorching or freezing temperatures that would make mammalian life impossible. In sum, plate tectonics are a necessary prerequisite to human survival on the only planet known to sustain life.

Ehrman and others may not find this convincing. They might ask, "Why didn't God devise a world that didn't require plate tectonics and consequently one that wouldn't have to put up with earthquakes?" In other words, surely God could have made a universe that operated according to a different set of laws.

Ward and Brownlee's answer to this is as simple as it is devastating. Such a world could have produced life, but it surely could not have produced creatures like us. Science tells us that our world has all the necessary conditions for species like Homo sapiens to survive and endure.

Our planet requires oxygen and a warming sun and water in order for us to live here, and we appreciate this, even though we recognize that people can get sunstroke and drown in the ocean. So, too, it seems that plate tectonics are, as Ward and Brownlee put it, a "central requirement for life" as we know it.

This is not to suggest, as the scientist and philosopher Leibniz once argued, that ours is the best of all possible worlds. But ours may be the best of all feasible worlds, at least as viewed from a human perspective. This recognition will not stop people from bemoaning the next earthquake, but it should at least stop us from blithely assuming that the Creator could have done a much better job.